change, but they can report it, help to

consolidate it and to some extent speed

it on its way.
As I have often observed, Japan
provides the last centurys best example
of enhanced competitive identity. The
effect of Japans economic miracle on the
image of the country itself was quite as
dramatic as its effect on the countrys
output: 40 or even 30 years ago, made
in Japan was a decidedly negative
concept, as most Western consumers had
based their perception of Japan on their
experience of shoddy, second-rate
products ooding the marketplace. The
products were cheap, certainly, but they
were basically worthless. In many
respects the perception of Japan was
much as Chinas has been in more recent
years.
Yet Japan has now become enviably
synonymous with advanced technology,
manufacturing quality, competitive
pricing and even style and status. Japan,
indeed, passes the best branding test of
all: whether consumers are prepared to
pay more money for functionally
identical products, simply because of
where they come from. It is fair to say
that in the 1950s and 1960s most
Europeans and Americans would only
buy Japanese products because they were
signicantly cheaper than a Western
alternative; now, in certain very valuable
market segments, such as consumer
electronics, musical instruments and
motor vehicles, Western consumers will
consistently pay more for products
manufactured by previously unknown
brands, purely on the basis that they are
perceived to be Japanese.
I am often asked why and when the
images of countries, cities and regions
change. In my experience they only ever
change for two reasons: either because
the country changes, or because it does
something to people.
The rst kind of change is usually a
very gradual process, and the majority of
success stories about brand change are
not stories of brand management at all:
Irelands change from a collapsing rural
backwater in the 1960s to the Celtic
Tiger of the 1990s was primarily a
miracle of foreign direct investment
promotion; South Africas change from a
virtual pariah to the Rainbow Nation
of today was rst and foremost a political
miracle, triggered by the end of
apartheid, the election of Nelson
Mandela and the formation of one of the
most innovative constitutions created in
the last century. In both cases, the
nation brand, or what I prefer to call
the competitive identity of the country, was
built through its actions and behaviours,
and not through any deliberate attempt
to market the country directly.
The prominent marketing campaigns
carried out by South Africa may have
helped a little to shorten the lag between
reality and global perception, by
supporting what was in the news media
to bring the changes to peoples
attention, and help summarise and
characterise them. In such cases
marketing communication can certainly
play a role: but it does seem to conrm
that all it can really do is capture the
zeitgeist and reect changes in society
that are already taking place.
Communications cannot substitute
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Muhammad in Denmarks Jyllands-Posten
and other newspapers, which eventually
resulted in rioting and numerous deaths,
as well as widespread boycotting of
Danish and other Scandinavian goods in
shops all over the Muslim world. A
serious rift appeared to have opened up
between the values of Islam and some
aspects of secular liberal Western
democracy.
In the 2005 Q4 study, Norway and
Denmark remained in level positions
almost throughout the index, suggesting
that many people, especially beyond
Northern Europe, do not have a strong
sense of the differences between these
two countries, even when it comes to
distinguishing between their exports (this
despite the fact that Danish brands like
Lego, Bang and Olufsen, Carlsberg and
several others are associated with
Denmark, while Norway produces no
famous global brands). The strongest
component of both countries images was
in governance, where both ranked within
the top ve on every governance
question (with Norway consistently a
shade ahead of Denmark). This tted in
with a fairly well-established traditional
perception rooted, like most
perceptions, in reality that Northern
European and especially Scandinavian
countries are fairly, efciently and
liberally governed, with a strong tradition
of social welfare and a good record in
international relations and development.
Elsewhere in the world Denmarks
scores remained more stable, although
there was a slight depression in the
scoring from the panellists in Central
Europe (Hungary, Poland, Estonia and
the Czech Republic), for example on
key questions about peoples interest in
Danish products and services, their
expectation of being made to feel
welcome if they visit the country, their
propensity to employ a Dane and their
view of the Danish governments
Again, though, the change in the
image of Japan over the second half of
the 20th century was not primarily
designed as an image change: it was an
export, design, technological and
industrial miracle. South Korea, and
more recently China, have quite
deliberately followed Japans lead in this,
but with the advantage of hindsight are
dealing with the image simultaneously
with the product change, and using
brand management techniques to build
their corporate and national reputations
as they build their product which is
why they are getting there faster.
The second reason why the images of
countries change is not when things
happen to the country, but when people
are personally affected by the place in
some way. In such cases national
reputation can change quite suddenly in
the minds of certain individuals or
groups.
This can be a positive change: in the
Nation Brands Index data, I have found
a statistically signicant correlation
between a positive experience of visiting
a country and positive feelings about its
products, its government, its culture, its
people. More research is needed in this
area, but an interesting hypothesis to
work with at this point would be that
any positive experience of a country, its people
or its productions tends to create a positive
bias towards some or all aspects of the
country.
Or, of course, it can be negative. A
direct attack on the individuals self,
country, values, religion or population,
whether real or perceived, can damage
the brand in that individuals mind in an
equally powerful way: the most striking
example of this since the Nation Brands
Index started was the impact of the
Danish cartoon crisis.
Last December an international furore
broke over the publication of satirical
cartoons depicting the Prophet
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Editorial
the same time, and they can respond to
surveys like the NBI in different ways
too: as consumers, as politically aware
national or global citizens or as
individuals thinking about their own
lives, tastes and careers.
Given the nature of the survey, it is
quite likely that in previous editions of
the NBI these relatively pro-Western
respondents were expressing their views
about Denmark and other mature
Western economies as consumers or
potential consumers of their products,
tourism, popular culture, employment
and education opportunities and so forth.
But if Denmark touches a different nerve
a political, personal, cultural or
religious one then the reaction may
temporarily or even permanently drown
out what they feel for the country in
other ways. We have all seen images of
CocaCola-drinking, Nike-wearing
youths in the Middle East and South
Asia burning American ags.
This particular episode, like all
wildres, started in one small place, but
spread rapidly because it found dry tinder
and favourable winds (perhaps
predictably, some people suspect arson).
In consequence it soon created a violent
impact well beyond Denmarks borders.
As the Arab News reported on 28th
January, 2006:
Many international brands have become
targets of the recent boycott of Danish
products, thanks to the confusion of consumers
caused in part by the misinformation
distributed by the proponents of the ban. The
email I received said that NIDO is one of the
Danish products, so I stopped buying it, said
Saudi teacher Khaled Al-Harthi, who didnt
know that NIDO is a product of the Swiss
Nestle Company. A ier obtained by Arab
News calls for boycotting Danish and
Norwegian products . . . the ier listed many
items that are not products of Denmark,
including Kinder (owned by Italys
Ferrero-Rocher) and New Zealands Anchor.
contribution to human rights and
international peace and security. At the
further end of the spectrum, the
American panels average scores for
Denmark went up slightly perhaps
reecting a sense of relief that, for once,
somebody else was in trouble.
By contrast, the Egyptian panels
average scores for China rose a
suggestion that the whole axis of its
global loyalties has undergone a slight
shift.
Denmark was the only country in the
NBI that suffered a reduction in its mean
overall score between 2005 Q4 and 2006
Q1.
Although some of the changes reported
here are subtle, often no more than a few
percentage points, they are signicant
because country scores generally move
very little from one quarter to the next.
Peoples views of other countries are
generally quite xed and stable, and it
takes something very serious indeed to
make them revise their views. Above all,
it takes something personal.
And it goes without saying that this
effect can be prolonged and reinforced
more or less at will from generation to
generation through education and
indoctrination if it is in the interests of
society or governments to do so
which is one reason why it is impossible
to make any predictions about how long
this effect will last in the case of
Denmark.
Generally, if an action is strongly out
of character with the nations reputation,
peoples beliefs about that nation will
return to their previous state relatively
quickly; but it seems clear that the
respect expressed by the Egyptian,
Turkish, Indonesian and Malaysian
respondents for Denmark prior to the
cartoons episode was something that
existed in one part of their being but not
in another. People can hold several
contradictory feelings about countries at
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Editorial
exporters are caught in the cross-re and
their products boycotted. Even other
countries have suffered because they
happen to lie in the same geographical
region and have some brand values in
common.
If we pursue the metaphor of national
reputation as brand image, the nature of
the dilemma becomes clear. Were such
an episode to threaten the well-being
and reputation of a corporation, it would
be obvious what to do: the chief
executive would address all staff, warn
them that they are all equally responsible
for preserving the organisations good
name and demand that they behave on
brand or lose their jobs.
But corporations are not democracies,
they are a species of tolerated tyranny. As
the prime minister of Denmark pointed
out, he is not and cannot be responsible
for the behaviour of the free media in a
democracy, as long as they act within the
law. Perhaps on this occasion the law was
inadequate, and perhaps in an
increasingly interconnected world and
increasingly multiracial societies the old
models of national law need to evolve
faster than they currently do. Perhaps in
an enlightened modern society the forces
of education, cultural sensitivity and
respect could and should operate more
effectively to prevent such episodes than
the blunt instrument of the law.
But the fact remains that although
countries depend on their reputations as
much as corporations do, they have
quite rightly very little power to
control the way those reputations are
treated or mistreated by their own
citizens. Nations being viewed as single
brands is a phenomenon of growing
importance which is increasingly resistant
to direct control and who knows
where that will lead us?
Simon Anholt
Managing Editor
. . . Zakaria Ismail, manager of Al-Malki
supermarket, said they would start hanging signs
indicating Danish products. They had to do so
in order to reduce their loss of sales of products
that are mistaken as Danish . . . He said that all
customers now generated the habit of reading
the source of each product to make sure of its
origin. Even old people who cannot read, are
asking, Where is this made? he said.
The episode is a stark illustration of the
real meaning of globalisation: almost
every nation and culture on earth is now
sharing elbow room in a single
information space. No conversation is
private any longer, no media are
domestic and the audience is always
global. And everybody knows what
happens when a group of human beings
with different backgrounds, habits, values
and ambitions are thrown together in the
same crowded space: sooner or later,
tempers start to fray. Somebody treads on
someone elses toes; some say by accident
and some say on purpose; insults get
traded, a ght breaks out.
The implications of the Danish
cartoons episode are profound and leave
us with several unanswerable questions. It
is a universal human trait, whether we
like it or not, to brand other countries,
other races, other religions, other cultures.
No matter how complex or even
contradictory they are, we often resort to
treating them as single entities. How
quickly our disapproval of one
governments foreign policy can lead to
mistrust or persecution of that countrys
people; the failure of one company can be
taken as indicative of the imminent failure
of its countrys economy; admiration for a
single media star can lead to an imaginary
liking for the entire population of the
country. This case is no different: the
actions of one independent newspaper are
blamed on the people of the country, the
government is expected to explain or
resolve the issue and the countrys
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